The party won the vote by breaking the convention of "pairing off", when parties agree to hold back MPs to balance out MPs on the other side who are ill or otherwise engaged.
Swedish media have been calling it a kupp, a word with roughly the same meaning as the English "coup" but a notch less dramatic.
Linda Lindberg, the party's group leader, said that the move had been necessary to prevent "drama-seeking independent MPs" from upsetting the system.
"The people have voted for the Tidö majority and as a result, as voters, you should also be able to expect that our policies become reality, regardless of whether there are a couple of drama-seeking independents taking our seats in the chamber," she said.
"Important legislation must be allowed to take precedence over the influence of independents and the system of pairing off, which is why I ensured that this vote was passed."
Social Democrats
The Social Democrats, the biggest party in both the opposition and the parliament as a whole, were highly critical but gave little sense of what concrete action they would take.
Lena Hallengren, group leader of the Social Democrats, described herself as "distraught" after the coup.
"This is extremely serious. It is undemocratic," she said. "This is like cheating at cards. They can't be trusted."
"The pairing-off system is currently up in the air," she later told Sveriges Radio.
"Cheating a majority in the Riksdag [parliament] by violating the pairing off system is proof of how the Sweden Democrats can't be taken seriously," Hallengren wrote in a post on X.
The Social Democrats' education spokesperson, Anders Ygeman, told Dagens Nyheter that the move was "quite simply cheating", and made a veiled threat to suspend the pairing-off agreement for the Sweden Democrats.
"Åkesson and Kristersson must restore trust in the system. But what kind of attendance rate does Jimmie Åkesson have in the chamber? For him, the pairing-off system is quite important."
Moderates
The Moderate Party, which relies on Sweden Democrat support for its position in government, has given mixed messages.
Migration Minister Johan Forssell came out fighting, criticising the Social Democrats for joining the other three opposition parties to push for transition rules in the first place.
"It is completely irresponsible of the opposition to present this proposal," he told the TT newswire, saying that the Swedish Security Service, Säpo, has been "very clear" that the new stricter requirements need to apply immediately. "Excluding tens of thousands directly [from the new citizenship rules] would have been completely irresponsible and dangerous for Sweden."
But Mattias Karlsson, the party's group leader in the parliament, expressed concern that the parties in the parliament had lost trust in one another.
"Right now, my sense is that we no longer have a functioning pairing-off system in the parliament," he told the TT newswire. Lindberg had not informed him, he said, of the Sweden Democrats' intentions in advance.
"It's extremely important that we can rebuild faith between our parties. Right now, there is no trust and I find it hard to see how that can be solved."
The government parties, he added, had the most to lose from a breakdown in the pairing-off system.
"It's obvious that the government parties get the most benefit from the pairing-off agreement and that's the case whatever the government."
"It would be extremely unfortunate if we didn't have a pairing-off system for the rest of this term. It would put us under enormous pressure if we didn't know from vote to vote whether we were doing to get our product through."
Behind the scenes, other Moderate MPs were seething.
"It's a clusterfuck," one anonymous Moderate told the Expressen newspaper. "The entire leadership position in Tidö [the current government plus the Sweden Democrats], the sense of responsibility and the willingness to act the grown-up vanished in one puff when they were unprepared and let the Sweden Democrats act like they were in a day care."
Centre Party
The Centre Party's group leader in parliament, Hannes Hervieu, said he feared the long-term impact on trust in the parliament.
"The Swedish people should be able to trust that the agreements we have over the rules of play for how Swedish democracy works will be upheld," he told Svenska Dagbladet. "This is something the Sweden Democrats have now completely abandoned. I fear that this will damage trust in how the Swedish parliament functions."
Green Party
Annika Hirvonen, group leader of the Green Party, and the driving force behind the motion defeated by the Sweden Democrats' tactics, told The Local that she hoped that the fiasco would lead to a new vote.
"We will need to discuss how we are going to proceed, because after this kind of breach of trust, we can't continue as if nothing has happened. A reasonable thing to do, of course, would be to take the initiative to put this issue to a new vote."
She told the TT newswire that the Sweden Democrats had used underhand measures to overcome a majority.
"We had a majority for transition rules in the citizenship law. The Sweden Democrats knew that and that's why they chose to manipulate the result."
Left Party
The Left Party has also called for the vote to be re-run.
"SD lacks respect for the democratic rules of the game. It's clear that that vote needs to be re-run," the party's leader, Nooshi Dadgostar, wrote on X.
Liberals and Christian Democrats
We haven't been able to find any comments from either the Liberals or Christian Democrats, but will update this article if we do.
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