From 1964 to 1966, Fritz W. Scharpf served as an Assistant Professor of Law at Yale Law School and, in 1965, also as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago Law School. From 1966 to 1968, he received a habilitation scholarship from the German Research Foundation (DFG) at the University of Freiburg. In 1968, he became a Full Professor (Ordinarius) of Political Science at the University of Konstanz, where he established an interdisciplinary social science program.
Scharpf was a member of the Project Group for Government and Administrative Reform, which developed proposals for reorganising the Federal Government, including the restructuring of the Federal Ministries. From 1973 to 1984, Scharpf was the Director of the International Institute for Management and Administration at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB), where he also held a research professorship from 1984 to 1986. From 1986 until his retirement in 2003, he was the Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG). During this period, he held visiting professorships and research stays in Stanford, USA (1987), Florence (1995 and 1999), and Paris (2001).
