Distributed Norm Enforcement via Ostracism

Abstract. An agent normative society has to deal with two main con-cerns: how to define norms and how to enforce them. Enforcement be-comes a complex issue as agent societies become more decentralized and open. We propose a new distributed mechanism to enforce norms by os-tracizing agents that do not abide by them. Our simulations have shown that, although complete ostracism is not always possible, the mechanism substantially reduces the number of norm violations.