Programming Normative Artifacts with Declarative Obligations and Prohibitions

Abstract—Normative concepts (e.g., obligations and prohibitions) are seen as a suitable tool for regulating the observable behavior of software agents. An enforcement mechanism – a process that detects when a norm is active, detects violations of the norms and handles these violations – is crucial for the practical use of norms in the construction of multi-agent systems. We propose a programming language for programming normative artifacts in terms of “declarative” norms referring to a state of the world (as opposed to “procedural” norms only referring to actions), and introduce the operational semantics of the norm enforcement mechanism.