Defining and distributing policies
Enabling SELinux does not automatically start the enforcement of access. If SELinux is enabled and it cannot find a policy, it will refuse to start. That is because the policy defines the behavior of the system (what SELinux should allow). SELinux policies are generally distributed in a compiled form (just like with software) as policy modules. These modules are then aggregated into a single policy store and loaded in memory to allow SELinux to enforce the policy rules on the system.
Note
Gentoo, being a source-based meta-distribution, distributes the SELinux policies as (source) code as well, which is compiled and built at install time, just like it does with other software.
The following diagram shows the relationship ...
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