This chapter describes the practices, rights systems, history, management tools, and governance of Swiss alpine grazing. Although I emphasize common property, private property is also discussed. Because there may be two audiences for this material, I have arranged it to allow the reader to decide how much of it to read. One audience, I suspect, will be interested primarily in the distinctions between open access and common property and the idea that common property may present a solution to resource use that rivals that of private property. For this audience, who may not be interested in an exhaustive description of Swiss alpine grazing, I provide a summary section on how the Swiss have avoided the open access problem. For the second audience, interested institutional economists, economic historians, geographers, and anthropologists, I provide a detailed treatment of Swiss grazing practices to which many English-speaking scholars may otherwise have no access.

The following section is a brief introduction on alpine grazing for all readers. Subsequently, I present the summary on limited entry and methods of resource protection. At this point, those interested only in the debate on open access and common and private property can proceed to Chapter 5 without loss of continuity. The remainder of the chapter gives a full description of the rights systems, history, management tools, and governance of Swiss grazing commons.