Christian democrats, conservatives and populist radical right parties on the other hand. The former set of parties support more progressive social policies, whereas the latter set of parties are more socially conservative. What stands out here is that the difference in policy position is much more pronounced that it was in Figure 10. That is, whereas most mainstream party families hold relatively centrist positions in the civil liberties versus law-and-order debate(with nonetheless clear preferences), their positions on social lifestyle are less centrist. They can serve as a more obvious identifier between clusters of party families: social democrats and liberals with very clear progressive positions; conservative and Christian democratic parties with moderately conservative standpoints; and finally the populist radical right with the most conservative position. Figure 11. Position on social lifestyle. Position of the party, supporting liberal policies (0) to opposing liberal policies (10) 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 199 2 8 00 2 0 00 2 2 00 2 4 00 2 6 00 2 8 01 2 0 01 2 2 01 2 4 01 2 6 01 2 8 020 Social democrats Liberals Christian democrats Conservatives Populist radical right As immigration represents a key societal debate in Western Europe, party positions on this issue are particularly relevant to study, and we visualise this in Figure 12. Similar to Figures 10 and 11, we notice a clear distinction between social democrats and liberals on one hand, and conservatives, Christian democrats and populist radical right parties on the other hand. The former party families hold relatively centrist positions on immigration, while particularly conservative and populist radical right parties are more restrictive in terms of their desired immigration policy. Populist radical right parties stand out even more because they hold such highly restrictive positions on immigration in both absolute and relative terms. Scholars have indeed emphasised this is the main issue populist radical right parties set out to politicise, so that they can claim “issue ownership” on this topic. The transformation of the mainstream right and its impact on(social) democracy 33