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The processing of the advanced therapies regulation is of particular interest to scholars of the European Union's (EU) legislative process and students of the European Parliament (EP) because it provides a case study which throws light upon assumptions commonly made about the role of the EP's 'relais actors', the promotion of consensus-building within and between parliamentary committees, and the development of intraorganizational rules in response to early agreements in the co-decision procedure. An examination of the EP's processing of the advanced therapies dossier provides an 'unusual' but vivid illustration of how the identification of committee rapporteurs as the most important parliamentary 'relais actors' fails to capture the increasingly important roles performed by shadow rapporteurs. Significantly, the 'unusual' occurrences associated with the processing of the advanced therapies regulation came at a crucial juncture in the reconsideration of the EP's intraorganizational rules in relation to early agreements and the subsequent adoption of new Rules of Procedure in 2009.

Recent theoretical reconceptualisations of political representation and contemporary empirical analyses of parliamentary representation have largely neglected the representation of parliaments as institutions. As a consequence, relatively little attention has been focused upon what is being communicated to citizens about parliaments and upon the nature of the parliamentary institutions that citizens are expected to engage with. This is the neglected institutional dimension of parliamentary representation. Using interview data from 39 key actors in the Scottish, Westminster and European Parliaments, we analyse who act as 'claim-makers' on behalf of parliaments, the nature of these claims in different political contexts, and the 'symbolic intent' and claims associated with the architectural design of parliamentary buildings. We identify a basic paradox of institutional representation in that those who 'speak for' (most loudly and most persistently) and 'act for' parliaments as institutions are not primarily elected representatives but rather non-elected officials.

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