On ‘Becoming’ Representative: How New MPs Build Scaffolding to Do Representation

After a newly elected politician formally ‘wins’ their seat, they embark on a process of learning to enact representation. Scholars have theorised how representatives mobilise and build constituencies (Disch 2021), and how they make and perform representative claims to different audiences (Saward 2020). Yet remarkably little is known empirically about the process of ‘becoming’ representative. This paper sheds empirical light on how politicians learn and feel their way into their representative role. Interviews with over 20 newly elected Australian federal politicians provides novel experiential insights into how they transitioned from being ‘the candidate’ to ‘the representative’, how they established representative priorities and practices, and how they learned to represent. The findings reveal that when MPs step into their new role most are surprised to learn that it comes with no formal job description. Instead, they are required to curate a representative persona and develop their own practices of representation. In the first six months of a new MP’s journey these tasks are typically overshadowed by the work involved in building the material, managerial and administrative scaffolding that supports the doing of representation. For example, they must set up their constituency and parliamentary offices with equipment and digital infrastructure, appoint staff and build a team, attend training and meet new colleagues, learn party and parliamentary procedures, and make sense of relevant agencies and administrative systems. Overall, this paper advances knowledge of the work involved in becoming an elected representative. These empirical insights enrich scholarly debates on the temporal, material and relational aspects of contemporary political representation, and inform programs to induct and support new politicians.