1. A method for evaluating a context-based policy, the policy having a set of attributes, comprising: receiving an entitlement request for a set of one or more entitlement values to be used by the policy to evaluate an authorization request; upon receipt of the entitlement request, and based at least on the policy, formulating a search query against an external data repository; executing the search query against the external data repository and, in response, receiving, as a result, a candidate set of one or more entitlement values, wherein the candidate set of one or more entitlement values is bounded by the policy; evaluating the entitlement request against the policy and the result of the search query to generate a response to the entitlement request:, wherein the receiving, formulating, executing and evaluating steps are implemented in software logic executing on a hardware element.