Abstract

There are three centrally important ways in which norms have been elaborated and explained: in terms of religious or natural law strictures on behavior, in terms of constraints imposed by rationality, and, recently, in terms of agents' behavior in well‐defined games. The principal difficulty of a gaming account of norms is to show how the account explains motivations of individuals to follow the norms. This issue is examined in the context of small‐number norms and large‐number norms. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Politics, New York University, 19 W. 4th Street, New York, NY 10012; e‐mail: [email protected].