Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention provide an authorization framework that can accept one or more pluggable authorization modules and the final authorization decision can be a collective decision of these modules based on some criteria. The authorization framework of the present invention can be used by an application to call upon one or more pluggable authorization modules, which can be configured externally by some mechanism, to make individual authorization decisions. The overall authorization decision by the authorization framework is cumulative decision of the individual modules based on some criteria that can be configured. Each pluggable authorization module can be configured to perform its own authorization decision making process that can be different from those of the other modules.