Good parliaments require good parties. As the gatekeepers to political office, parties determine who leads, who represents, and how inclusive political institutions become. Yet what makes a party good, and how can we evaluate it beyond representation? Building on the literature on gender-sensitive parliaments (Childs 2016) and extending it to political organizations, this paper considers how such criteria might be applied to parties themselves. While research on political recruitment and candidate support is extensive, far less attention has been paid to what happens after electoral defeat or nomination loss. Drawing conceptually on feminist ethics of care, this paper develops party pastoral care as a framework for assessing how parties fulfil or fail to fulfil their responsibilities toward those they recruit. A good party provides pastoral care in the form of emotional, financial, and institutional support for aspirants who risk personal well-being by seeking nominations or running for office but ultimately lose. Such care is particularly critical for women and other equity-seeking groups who face harassment, intimidation, and online abuse that may persist long after campaigns end. Using a mixed-methods design, this paper combines autoethnographic reflection with interviews with aspirant candidates across Canadian parties to illustrate how party cultures and structures shape candidate experiences. While focused on the Canadian case, the analysis speaks to broader patterns in established democracies, where parties often lack institutionalized mechanisms of care and follow-up. The framework invites comparative analysis across other national contexts where similar dynamics affect candidate retention, reoffering, and political trust. By conceptualizing pastoral care as an indicator of party quality, this paper contributes to international debates on leadership, representation, and institutional trust in gender-sensitive politics. How parties treat their own recruits provides a valuable and often overlooked measure of democratic integrity across contexts.
