In a cognitive radio, a method of establishing an operational policy for use in a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) group, wherein the policy can be described by layers of policy parameters with progressively higher layers having a progressively increasing number of parameters, involves determining that a policy change is to be made from a current policy; requesting policy information from at least one P2P group member; receiving a policy description from the at least one P2P group member; and implementing a change in the lowest layer policy parameter to establish a new operational policy.