Fueling the backlash: The Fuel Uproar 2.0 and the political re-articulation of legitimacy in Swedish climate politics

• The Fuel Uproar has played an important part in the re-articulation of legitimacy within Swedish climate politics. • The Fuel Uproar has been central to the new Swedish government's discursive construction of “the people” • The re-articulation of legitimacy within Swedish climate politics has created a standstill in decarbonization endeavors. Popular backlashes against decarbonization transitions have attracted growing attention from scholars and policymakers alike. This article examines the articulation of backlash politics in Swedish climate governance through the lens of post-foundational political theory, drawing primarily on Laclau and Mouffe’s writings on hegemony, articulation, and empty signifiers. Focusing on the digital protest movement “The Fuel Uproar 2.0″ and the subsequent policy reversals in Swedish fuel politics following the 2022 election, the article traces how heterogeneous grievances were condensed into a chain of equivalence centered on the fossil fuel car as a nodal point, and how this articulation contributed to a broader rearticulation of legitimacy in Swedish climate politics. Rather than functioning as a delegitimating force alone, the Fuel Uproar contributed to the production of new legitimacies, in which popular acceptance has increasingly become a precondition for, rather than an outcome of, climate policy. A central reflection is that populist mobilization and technocratic, market-oriented climate governance have operated not as opposing political projects but as complementary fronts within a shared hegemonic formation, a dynamic that sits uneasily with orthodox theoretical interpretations of the relationship between populism and technocracy.