Anti-Norm Agreements: Collusion Against the Sanctioning Mechanism

Abstract

"This working paper defines and studies anti-norm agreements. Anti-norm agreements are agreements of mutual no-sanctioning between some actors in the norm community. These agreements make it possible for all agreement parties to deviate from the norm. Using James Coleman’s formalization we show that anti-norm agreements are never efficient against the norm under perfect social system. However, when the assumption of perfect social system is dropped anti-norms can be efficient against the norm. We report preliminary simulation results on how vulnerable a simple sanctioning mechanism is against anti-norm agreements. Population dispersion is identified as a key theoretical variable. Finally, results are discussed in light of common-pool resource studies. We suggest how some combinations of empirical variables might lead to this type of enforcement problems."