Mali's highly diverse society had the structures of an overbearing state imposed upon it first by the French colonial powers and then by the independent Malian state. Such a model was completely alien to the organizational practices of the pastoral societies that make up a significant proportion of the population of the country and the region. It is clearly time to abandon a Western paradigm that does not properly recognize the country's particularities and to explore more adaptable methods of political organization that take its diversity into account.