a result, and unsurprisingly, we notice five clear and compact clusters in Figure 6. Most of the variation we notice is within the liberal and populist radical right party families, with the former primarily becoming more socially and culturally progressive and the latter becoming more economically interventionist. Figure 6. Party positions based on ideological stance towards economic and social/cultural issues. Position of the party, social and cultural issues from left (0) to right (10) 10 9 2010 2014 2019 2006 2002 8 1999 2006 2014 2002 2006 2002 2019 7 2010 2019 1999 1999 2010 2014 6 5 1999 2002 4 1999 2010 2002 2006 2014 2006 2014 3 2010 2019 2019 2 1 0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Position of the party, economic issues from left(0) to right(10) Social democrats Liberals Christian democrats Conservatives Populist radical right When looking at this data, we should not forget these are the average positions for a series of different parties across Western Europe. Consequently, it could be that in some countries we observe specific trajectories, which are not well captured in the evidence presented in Figure 6. Moreover, the data used here is only until 2019, which means our discussion does not cover party transformations that might have occurred after the official withdraw of the UK from the European Union(EU) in 2020, the presidency of Donald Trump(from January 2017 until January 2021) and the Russian military invasion of Ukraine that started in 2022. Not by chance, this policy study includes a series of country studies, which employ different methodologies and fine-grained analyses to assess the alleged transformation of certain party systems to date(see Chapters 4-9). Some scholars argue there might be a third dimension of competition between political parties, or at least one that can be considered different enough from the social and cultural dimension that it warrants separate attention, namely, the position towards European integration. 33 In Figure 7, we therefore map the overall orientation of party families about this issue, which ranges from one(strongly opposed) to seven(strongly in favour). We notice here that all mainstream party families, left and right, hold positions either somewhat or clearly favouring European integration. 28 The transformation of the mainstream right and its impact on(social) democracy