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The Portuguese Assembleia da República in context / Eunice Goes and Cristina Leston-Bandeira -- The Spanish Parliament in context / Bonnie N. Field and Caroline Gray -- Parliamentary party groups in the Iberian legislatures / Carlos Jalali and Juan Rodríguez Teruel -- Committee systems in Portugal and Spain / Jorge M. Fernandes and Pedro Riera -- Social distance and ideological congruence between MPs and citizens : Iberian legislatures before and after the great recession / André Freire and Xavier Coller -- The diversity gap in the Portuguese and Spanish parliaments : descriptive representation through an intersectional perspective / Ana Espírito-Santo, Tània Verge, and Laura Morales -- Interest groups in the Iberian legislatures / Marco Lisi and Luz Muñoz Marquez -- Iberian citizens' views on their parliaments : support, attitudes on representation, candidate selection and electoral system / José Santana-Pereira and Irene Martín -- The legislative role of Iberian legislatures / Cláudia Ribeiro, Mercedes Araújo and Sónia Rodrigues -- Parliamentary accountability / Manuel Sánchez de Dios -- The participation of the Spanish and the Portuguese parliaments in the activity of the European Union / Elviro Aranda Álvarez and Paulo Sande -- The relationship between regional and national parliaments in Spain and Portugal / Pablo Oñate and Ana M. Belchior -- Constitutional courts and national parliaments in Spain and Portugal / Nuno Garoupa, Joan Solanes Mullor, Teresa Violante.

Recent theoretical re-conceptualisations 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 official documents and 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.