Norm Governed Multiagent Systems: The Delegation of Control to Autonomous Agents

When agents make decisions, they have to deal with norms regulating the system. In this paper we therefore propose a rule-based qualitative decision and game theory combining ideas from multiagent systems and normative systems. Whereas normative systems are typically modelled as a single authority that imposes obligations and permissions on the agents, our theory is based on a multiagent structure of the normative system. We distinguish between agents whose behavior is governed by norms, so-called defender agents who have the duty to monitor violations of these norms and apply sanctions, and autonomous normative systems that issue norms and watch over the behavior of defender agents. We show that autonomous normative systems can delegate monitoring and sanctioning of violations to defender agents, when bearers of obligations model defender agents, which in turn model autonomous normative systems.