Multi-agent systems where the agents are developed by parties with competing interests, and where
there is no access to an agent's internal state, are often classi ed as `open'. The members of such systems may
inadvertently fail to, or even deliberately choose not to, conform to the system speci cation. Consequently, it is
necessary to specify the normative relations that may exist between the members, such as permission, obligation,
and institutional power. We present a framework being developed for executable speci cation of open multi-agent
systems. We adopt a bird's eye view of these systems, as opposed to an agent's perspective whereby it reasons
about how it should act. This paper is devoted to the presentation of various examples from the NetBill protocol
formalised in terms of institutional power, permission and obligation. We express the system speci cation in
the Event Calculus and execute the speci cation by means of a logic programming implementation. We also
give several example formalisations of sanctions for dealing with violations of permissions and obligations. We
distinguish between an open multi-agent system and the procedure by which an agent enters and leaves the
system. We present examples from the speci cation of a role-management protocol for NetBill, and demonstrate
the interplay between such a protocol and the corresponding multi-agent system.