Törbel alpine commons (Valais, Switzerland)

Background

Törbel is a small mountain village in the canton of Valais, Switzerland, on a steep slope above the Vispertal. For centuries its households combined private plots (meadows for hay, vineyards, gardens and grain fields) with communally owned land: the high summer pastures (the alp), forests, waste lands, irrigation channels and paths. The arrangement became famous through the American anthropologist Robert McC. Netting, who began fieldwork there in 1970 and published Balancing on an Alp in 1981, and through Elinor Ostrom, who opened her review of long-enduring commons in Governing the Commons (1990) with Törbel.

The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland records the first mention of the settlement in 1034, rules on water use in 1392 and 1400, a farmers' guild from 1463, a statute on alps and common land in 1507, a declaration of citizenship rights in 1531 and the first register of citizens in 1533. Ostrom, following Netting, dates the formal association of villagers for regulating the alp, forests and waste lands to articles signed in 1483. Netting found no resident aristocracy or landless labouring class over at least seven centuries: Törbel was a community of smallholders.

How it is governed

Rights to the commons belong to the citizens of the village (the Burger), not to every resident. Membership is hereditary or granted by the community, and outsiders who buy land do not automatically acquire grazing rights. The core rule described by Netting and Ostrom is the wintering rule: a household may send to the summer alp only as many cows as it can feed through the winter on hay from its own private meadows. Ostrom, quoting Netting, dates it to regulations written in 1517 stating that "no citizen could send more cows to the alp than he could feed during the winter", enforced by a local official who levied fines and kept half of them. This ties use of the commons to each household's own resources and limits total grazing without a central quota. An association of right-holders meets to set rules, elect officials and impose fines; officials inspect the pastures, allocate work and keep accounts. Households contribute labour days for maintaining paths, buildings and irrigation channels, and timber from the communal forest is marked and allotted by officials.

Monitoring is largely mutual. Cattle on the alp are counted, herders are hired collectively, and cheese or milk is divided according to each household's cows. Fines for overstocking or for taking wood without permission go to the association. Because the same families meet repeatedly in church, at assemblies and on the paths, cheating is visible and reputations are long.

Economy and public goods

The commons supplied summer grazing for cattle, firewood and building timber, litter and irrigation water, all of which made the private plots viable at high altitude. Communal land was used where the resource was spread thinly over large areas, uncertain in yield and costly to fence, while intensively worked land near the village stayed private. Netting argued that the mix of private and common tenure in Törbel was an adaptation to these ecological conditions rather than a relic. The village also bought additional pasture, acquiring the Oberaar alp in 1514 and selling it to a hydroelectric company in 1948.

The population grew from about 350 in 1798 to 693 in 1950 and fell to 498 in 2000, according to the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland. Today the local economy depends on commuting to industry in Visp, on tourism around the Moosalp and on part-time farming; the relative weight of the commons in household income is much lower than in Netting's time.

Conflict and disputes

The documentary record shows recurring rule-making over water and grazing, which suggests that disputes were frequent and were handled inside the community. Ostrom emphasises that the rules have been modified many times by the users themselves. The main long-term pressures came from outside: emigration, the decline of mountain agriculture, and new uses of land and water such as hydroelectric power and tourism. Researchers continue to study how such villages cope with depopulation and the digital divide.

Outcomes

Törbel's commons have been governed by the same community for more than five centuries without evident collapse of the pastures or forests, the opposite of the outcome predicted by Garrett Hardin's tragedy of the commons. Ostrom treated it as an exemplar for her design principles, especially clear boundaries of membership, rules matched to local conditions, collective-choice arrangements and graduated sanctions. In 2011 the village gave Ostrom a public reception. Its institutions are still active, though their economic role has shrunk.

Lessons for institution design

• Link access to the commons to private contributions. The wintering rule is self-scaling: it limits each user by a variable that is easy to observe and hard to fake.
• Mixed tenure can be efficient. Private and common property coexist, each where it fits the resource.
• Bounded membership is a precondition for long-lived commons but can also exclude newcomers and women from equal rights; boundaries need periodic review.
• Slow change, local rule-making. Rules were revised by the users over centuries rather than imposed from outside.
• Economic context can hollow out a sound institution when the resource it governs loses value; good design does not guarantee relevance.

Further reading

• Netting, 'What alpine peasants have in common', Human Ecology (1976)
• Historical Dictionary of Switzerland: Törbel
• swissinfo.ch: Törbel and Elinor Ostrom (2025, in German)
• Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons (1990)