 The norm-dependent theories encountered so far look to institutions and systems to embody and promote social norms. Regardless of whether institutions and systems themselves dominate, standard norm-dependent theories tend to see the existence of institutions as a necessary condition for domination through norms: e.g., the patriarch’s power to project authority in his family depends on widely accepted attitudes about the place of fathers in the institution of the family; the slave master’s power to project authority to his slaves depends on an economic and political system permitting property in human lives. Gwilym David Blunt’s theory stands apart by being norm-dependent without requiring background institutions. According to Blunt, even the mob boss has power over norms: in the language introduced above, this is an interactional site of domination drawn from a personal source: i.e., power between agents drawn from the mob boss’ personal control of guns and muscle. Unlike norm-independent theorists such as Lovett, Blunt claims that all social relationships involve norms. Insofar as the mob boss and the shop owner are socially related, this involves more than non-normative elements like strategic relatedness or exit costs. The asymmetry of power that matters is an asymmetry in the power to define the status of other parties in a social relationship. The mob boss has power enough to assign the shop owner an inferior place in their social relationships, and set up himself as the one who makes the rules in the relationship. In this way, Blunt believes he can preserve the standard neorepublican intuition that powerful agents like the mob boss can be dominators within a norm-dependent framework.