We use the concept of a distributive law of a monad over a copointed
endofunctor to define and develop a reformulation and mild
generalisation of Turi and Plotkin's notion of an abstract operational
rule. We make our abstract definition and give a precise analysis of
the relationship between it and Turi and Plotkin's
definition. Following Turi and Plotkin, our definition, suitably
restricted, agrees with the notion of a set of $GSOS$-rules, allowing
one to construct both an operational model and a canonical, internally
fully abstract denotational model. Going beyond Turi and Plotkin, we
construct what might be seen as large-step operational
semantics from small-step operational semantics and we show how our
definition allows one to combine distributive laws, in particular
accounting for the combination of operational semantics with
congruences.