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While in most liberal democracies the mandate of national MP is exercised on a full-time basis since the end of the 19th century, members of the Swiss Federal Assembly carry out their function as a part-time, with low parliamentary allowances, so-called “militia” office. Our article illustrates how the militia principle, a dominant cultural norm of public engagement, influenced the temporalities of parliamentary work. The analysis looks at the impact that this principle has on individual political careers, by increasing the selectivity of the biographical trajectories of Swiss MPs in terms of their socio-professional profile. On the other hand, the article shows to what extent the militia principle also affects the temporalities of the parliamentary institution itself. Since the 1960s, several debates are emerging around the relevance of this “political rule of the game” in connection with an evolving context that calls into question the old temporalities to make new ones appear, due to an increase in the workload and a professionalisation of the mandate of elected representatives in the Swiss Parliament.