Norms conferring public or private powers, i.e., the competence to issue other norms, play a very important role in law. But there is no agreement among legal philosophers about the nature of such norms. There are two main groups of theories, those that regard them as a kind of norms of conduct (either commands or permissions) and those that regard them as non-reducible to other types of norms. I try to show that reductionist theories are not quite acceptable; neither the command-variety (Kelsen, Alf Ross inOn Law and Justice), nor the permission-variety (von Wright, Kanger, Lindahl) provide a satisfactory account of competence norms.