He has rejected the traditional definition of ideologies, which sees the latter as static "belief systems" and instead bases his analysis on modern semantics.

The specific relations between ideological concepts may be analyzed by being set in their respective semantic fields.

[2] Different ideologies may give different meanings to the same term (a concept such as equality will have a material definition in Marxism while in liberalism it will rather have a legal and political importance).

According to Freeden, it is precisely these conceptual relations that should attract our attention as they will be likely to evolve in the long term.

This gives rise to a form of "conceptual competition", in which each ideology performs a continuous "decontestation" of its concepts; that is, it tries to eliminate all possible contestation of its own conceptual definitions, thereby rejecting competing definitions (Marxism will thus reject private property as a product of the exploitative nature of capitalism, just as liberalism may view state intervention as an infringement of individual freedoms).