# OpenAM Administration Guide
Chapter 3. Defining Authorization Policies

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## 3.3. How OpenAM Reaches Policy Decisions

OpenAM has to match policies to resources to take policy decisions. For a policy to match, the resource has to match a resources identified in a rule. The user making the request has to match a subject. Furthermore, at least one condition for each condition type has to be satisfied.

If more than one policy matches, OpenAM has to reconcile differences. When multiple policies match, the order in which OpenAM uses them to make a policy decision is not deterministic. However, a deny decision overrides an allow decision, and so by default once OpenAM reaches a deny decision its stops checking further policies. (If you want OpenAM to continue checking despite the deny, see Configuration > Global > Policy Configuration > Continue Evaluation on Deny Decision.)