I would really, REALLY like the ability to reject a policy upgrade. If you have completed 5 branches, you may not want to unlock a new branch and disable the effects of the other branch. This of course assumes that when you activate the new branch the other branch and all of it's constituent policies and effects are disabled like the tooltip says they are. If they stay in effect, then heck yes, let's activate a new branch. But you shouldn't have to activate an entire complete policy group to activate a new branch with limited effect.
Let me know if I am mistaken in how this works...