During the 1980s some remarkable public administration reforms took place in the Commonwealth primary industries portfolio statutory research and marketing authorities. These reforms implemented dual accountability arrangements which legislated the requirement for the authorities to be held accountable directly to government and Parliament, as well as to industry and community bodies which held either a financial stake in the authorities or a stake in the outcomes of their activities. This dissertation discusses the nature of the dual accountability arrangements in the broader context of administrative and accountability theory, with particular emphasis on its place in the evolution of public enterprise and of more open, participatory and socially responsive public administration. It also considers the 1980s reforms in the historical context of Australian primary industry institutionalisation and agrarian socialism. The dissertation concludes that dual accountability can strengthen an organisation's accountability while at the same time reduce the need for close administrative control. Dual accountability acknowledges that the fundamental processes of an organisation's accountability should apply in more than one direction, and that the decentralisation of these processes actually fills the voids left by removing control mechanisms. The dissertation also identifies variations in the application of dual accountability principles across primary industry authorities and suggests that there is potential for the principles to be applied to other areas of government administration.