Part I — Situation overview

On 4 July 2026, 444.hu — in an article by Német Szilvi — published the roughly 400-million-forint National Cultural Fund (NKA — the central public fund for Hungarian cultural grants) support list of former culture and innovation minister Hankó Balázs. According to the paper’s documents, the minister decided on the list roughly four days before the April 2026 election, typically as a single person. Among the beneficiaries, as the paper mentions, were Böjte Csaba’s association, a company linked to one of Kocsis Máté’s associates, and also expressly esoteric items — HVG separately highlighted that a million-forint grant would even have gone to research on Tuvan shamans, with the beneficiary not even having applied. According to the 24.hu report, items for the Bagossy Brothers, Ruzsa Magdi and Bunjevac literature also appeared on the list. The leadership that later took over the NKA — Tarr Zoltán, according to the paper — ultimately withdrew all the decisions.

The story is not without precedent, but it is important not to conflate it with earlier developments. A few weeks ago the news was still about the National Cultural Fund’s roughly 17-billion-forint, poorly transparent framework and the detentions by NAV (national tax authority) on suspicion of misappropriation/breach of trust — this was discussed in MIAK’s analysis of 24 June 2026. The present case is of a different nature and precisely for that reason carries heavier evidentiary value: this is not about a murky framework or an ongoing investigation, but about a concrete list assembled within a few days, with a single ministerial signature, every line of which documents how discretionary — that is, based on free deliberation, without fixed criteria — allocation works in practice. The “did not even apply, yet would have received” and “would have received more than requested” type items are not scattered errors, but the natural consequences of a decision structure.

MIAK’s reading is procedural, not ideological: supporting culture from public money is an entirely legitimate goal, but legitimacy depends not on the supported genre, but on the manner of the decision. A concert, a literary programme or even an ethnographic research project may in itself be valuable — the problem is that the award of public money was decided by a single politician, without public criteria and independent professional control, in the shadow of the election. Establishing the fact of an “irregularity” and its legal consequence is not a press question but a matter for the authorities and the courts; those concerned are entitled to the presumption of innocence; MIAK analyses the list as evidence of a flaw in the decision system, not as a pronouncement of individual guilt.

Part II — Literature foundation

Before turning to MIAK’s concrete proposals, it is worth fixing the scholarly frame in which the case can be interpreted. Robert Klitgaard, the American economist, one of the classic authors of anti-corruption policy, formulated his famous formula in his work Controlling Corruption (1988) — corruption flourishes where a monopoly position and discretionary authority meet the absence of accountability (in notation: C = M + D − A). The one-person, unbounded-criterion NKA decision satisfies exactly this formula: a single decision-maker (monopoly), deliberation without public rules (discretion), without subsequent accounting. Susan Rose-Ackerman, the Yale economist, in her work Corruption and Government (1999) shows that subjective, criterion-free resource allocation systemically produces patronage — that is, allocation based on political loyalty — regardless of the intention of the individual decision-makers, because incentives and not good intentions determine the outcome. The two authors’ common lesson is that the solution is not the replacement of persons, but the transformation of the decision structure. The detailed literature treatment — by author, with the argument developed — can be found in the 6.4 Literature in detail section.

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes three measurable measures which together eliminate one-person deliberation from NKA decisions.

3.1 Public application criteria and independent juries (from the next application cycle)

The most important structural change is the abolition of one-person ministerial discretion. Every NKA grant should be awarded on the basis of pre-published, measurable application criteria, and the decision should be made not by a single politician, but by an independent professional jury assembled by area, named openly, and provided with a conflict-of-interest declaration. Rejected applications should also receive a written, reasoned decision. This builds directly on MIAK’s culture-funding programme point: under the KU5 principle, the allocation of culture funding must take place on the basis of a data platform, not discretionarily. In the Klitgaard C = M + D − A frame (see 6.4.1) this step simultaneously reduces the monopoly (several jury members) and the discretion (fixed criteria). The “did not even apply, yet would have received” type item conceptually cannot occur in a public application system, because without an application there is nothing to award support to.

3.2 A public public-money dashboard for cultural grants (by 2027)

Alongside the decision criteria, the full, real-time publicity of the decisions and their justifications is the second pillar. Every NKA decision — beneficiary, amount, purpose, the jury’s justification — should be put on a machine-readable, searchable public platform. This is the cultural extension of MIAK’s A1 public-money dashboard programme point: the real-time, API-queryable publication of the full public-money expenditure. On such a platform the present list could not even have arisen as a “leaked document”, because it would have been public from the outset; and a “would have received more than requested” type deviation could receive an automatic flag with the logic of the anomaly detector under programme point A2. Publicity is not a punishment, but a means of restoring trust: even those grants that are otherwise entirely justified become more defensible.

3.3 A rule-of-law ex-post audit of the past lists

The third proposal is retrospective accountability — but strictly within a rule-of-law channel. The decisions now leaked and the earlier ones born of the one-person framework should be reviewed by the State Audit Office (ÁSZ — the independent financial audit body reporting to the National Assembly but subordinate only to the law) and, where necessary, the prosecution service; where a suspicion of crime arises, the investigation and the bringing of charges are the exclusive competence of the prosecution service. The precise handling of the branches of power is important: the ÁSZ audits and reports, but does not impose sanctions; a court decides on the legal consequence. In MIAK’s position, the withdrawal by the new NKA leadership was in itself a correct administrative step, but it does not substitute for an independent, itemised audit. The goal is not the advance pronouncement of personal responsibility — that is entitled to the presumption of innocence — but the documented clarification of which items met a professional standard and which did not.

The three proposals share the principle that the public money of culture is not protected from political abuse by finding a well-intentioned minister, but by removing unchecked individual deliberation from the decision structure. Public criteria, an independent jury and real-time transparency together make the system person-independent — reversing precisely that C = M + D − A logic which created the present list.

Part IV — Expected impacts and risks

Dimension Expected impact Risk
Culture More predictable, professionally based funding; more defensible support of genuine creative values Slower decision-making in the short term; the administrative burden of jurying may hit small applicants
Transparency Discretionary allocation recedes; public trust grows; abuse becomes visible sooner Raw data disclosure in itself may cause a “data tsunami” without context
Public administration A person-independent, auditable procedure Decision-makers may be diverted to informal channels if the formal system is too rigid

The main trade-off is stretched between speed and control. The one-person decision is fast, but uncontrollable; the jury-based, public system is slower, but defensible. The proposal tips to the risk side if the bureaucracy disproportionately burdens small creators — therefore, for small-sum applications a simplified but still criterion-based procedure is justified, while for large items the full jury-based and audited process remains. Publicity in itself can be a risk if we disclose raw data without visualisation and explanation; therefore the dashboard must not only publish but also make the data understandable.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth tracking? (suggested KPIs)

The following performance indicators (KPIs) will show in 12–24 months whether the change of direction is successful. These are suggestions, not government decisions — what MIAK considers worth tracking:

  • the share of the NKA framework the minister can decide alone, without fixed criteria, falls towards 0% (compared with the current one-person practice).
  • 100% of NKA decisions are available on a machine-readable, public platform, with beneficiary, amount and jury justification by 2027.
  • the number of grants awarded without a written application is zero.
  • the share of decisions made by independent professional juries (not with a ministerial signature) rises above 90%.

5.2 Summary

MIAK’s key message is that the now-leaked list is not a one-off scandal, but the imprint of a flawed decision structure — and precisely for that reason it is not enough to replace the responsible person or to withdraw the decisions; the structure itself must be transformed. MIAK asks the decision-makers to make the criteria public from the next application cycle, to entrust the decision to independent juries, and to make cultural public money transparent in real time; and it asks the public to hold the audit of the old lists to account by a rule-of-law standard, not to sit in judgement out of indignation. This position directly moves two MIAK foundational values: transparency — because the path of public money must be visible from the moment of the decision —, and accountability — because free deliberation is made legitimate only by a documented procedure that can also be checked afterwards. Without these two, the support of culture always depends on the goodwill of the minister of the day, which is precisely the opposite of rule-of-law public-money management.

Part VI — Justifications and further sources

6.1 Press framing by spectrum

The liberal-left and public-affairs band put the story at the centre, and focused on the one-person character of the decision, and on the concrete irregularities. 444.hu placed the emphasis on the leaked document and on the fact that the minister “decided single-handedly” four days before the election; HVG highlighted the application-less item of the Tuvan-shaman research as the absurd borderline case of discretion; 24.hu detailed the concrete range of beneficiaries — extending from concerts to Bunjevac literature — and in a separate article gave voice to Fidesz’s reaction. ATV placed the case in the context of the earlier ministerial explanation about the 17-billion framework.

The pro-government and conservative band chose a defensive-relativising frame: according to the Fidesz reaction quoted by 24.hu, “every forint went to the right place”, while Magyar Nemzet emphasised that “every supported NKA application served cultural goals”. This framing steers attention to the legitimacy of the purpose of the grants, while not reflecting on the real question — the problem is not whether it is a cultural goal, but whether the decision was born without public criteria and independent control, with a single signature. The economic band did not put the topic in its focus on that day.

6.2 Facts and data

  • The order of magnitude of the list: some 400 million forints of cultural support (444.hu, 4 July 2026).
  • The timing of the decision: four days before the April 2026 election, largely by one-person ministerial decision.
  • Documented anomalies: beneficence without a written application (Tuvan-shaman research, HVG); an award higher than the amount requested (444.hu).
  • The leadership taking over the NKA (Tarr Zoltán, according to 444.hu) withdrew all the decisions.
  • Wider context: the earlier debate about the roughly 17-billion-forint framework of the National Cultural Fund and the detentions by NAV on suspicion of misappropriation/breach of trust (MIAK press monitor, 24 June 2026).

6.3 Policy aspects

  • Culture (programme points) — the transparency of culture funding, NKA reform and application independence; the replacement of discretionary allocation with a data-platform-based, public system.
  • Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points) — the logic of the public-money dashboard and the anomaly detector, the exclusion of discretionary grants, rule-of-law-framed ex-post accountability.

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 Robert Klitgaard: Controlling Corruption

The central idea of Klitgaard’s classic work is that corruption is not primarily a moral but a structural phenomenon: it develops where the decision-maker is in a monopoly position over a resource, has broad discretionary authority, and there is no one to hold them substantively to account. This is condensed into the well-known C = M + D − A relation (corruption = monopoly + discretion − accountability). According to Klitgaard’s analysis, successful anti-corruption reforms always shift one of these three factors: they reduce the monopoly (more actors in the decision), narrow the discretion (fixed, public rules), or strengthen accountability (transparency, ex-post control). In the case of the now-leaked NKA list all three factors point in the wrong direction — a single decision-maker, unbounded deliberation, without ex-post control —, therefore MIAK’s proposal too targets all three factors at once: the jury shifts the monopoly, the public criterion the discretion, the dashboard the accountability.

📖 Source: Robert Klitgaard: Controlling Corruption

6.4.2 Susan Rose-Ackerman: Corruption and Government

The key thesis of Rose-Ackerman’s economic analysis is that corruption and patronage are not a problem of “bad people”, but a consequence of incentives and the institutional structure. Where resources are allocated by subjective, criterion-free deliberation, the system drifts towards allocation based on political loyalty even if the individual decision-makers are in good faith — because unbounded discretion in itself creates the possibility of reciprocation and selective favouritism. It follows that reform must reshape not the persons, but the relationship of the market and the state, as well as the institutions of transparency and accountability. Translated to the allocation of the public money of culture: the question is not whether a “good minister” decides, but whether the structure of the decision — public rules, an independent body, disclosure — excludes the possibility of selective favouritism. This provides the economic basis of MIAK’s 3.1 and 3.2 proposals.

📖 Source: Susan Rose-Ackerman: Corruption and Government

6.5 International comparison

The theory of narrowing discretion also works in practice. In Austria, the mandatory quarterly publication of media-support data — the regulator’s disclosure practice — in itself reduced the discretionary, unbounded allocation of grants, because the fact of publicity disciplines the decision-maker. In the wider field of public-money transparency, Slovakia’s contract-register system (the mandatory online publication of all state contracts) brought a measurable price reduction in the transparent categories after its introduction, while Brazil’s public public-money portal made possible the uncovering of a significant part of corruption cases from civil data analysis. The common lesson is that publicity is not ex-post control, but a factor that improves the quality of the decision in advance — this is precisely what MIAK’s dashboard proposal targets for cultural grants.

Culture

  • KU5 — Cultural participation index and open, data-platform-based culture funding
  • KU2 — Media pluralism and support-transparency monitoring

Transparency and anti-corruption policy

  • A1 — Public-money dashboard
  • A2 — Public-procurement and support anomaly detector
  • A6 — Strengthening checks and balances

6.7 Source register

Press sources (MIAK press monitor, 5 July 2026 — topic 3):

Knowledge-base references (literature):

  • 📖 Robert Klitgaard: Controlling Corruption
  • 📖 Susan Rose-Ackerman: Corruption and Government — Causes, Consequences, and Reform

Note: in the blog’s visible text the book’s local file path does NOT appear — only the author and the title.

MIAK internal materials:

  • MIAK policy area: Culture (programme points; programme point ID: KU5)
  • MIAK policy area: Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points; programme point ID: A1)
  • MIAK press monitor, 5 July 2026 — topic 3, score: 79/100

Additional public data sources:

  • NKA public application database; State Audit Office cultural-support investigations

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