For example, Arnold Schwarzenegger served as governor of California despite not holding any office before. How did he prepare for this, and when?
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He’s not doing it all on his own. There’s a large existing civil service that actually do all the work, and have always done all the work.
He would also have a team around him that will include people who have experience.
Interesting fact, when Donald Trump became President, having no politiical experience at all, his transition team was mostly from the Heritage Foundation. https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/trump-transition-heritage-foundation-231722
They have support.
a) Friends and supporters.
b) Party. Nearly every elected politician has involvement with a party. These political parties have position papers, advisors, consultants. The elected politician probably has quite a lot of experience within the party.
c) Paid consultants. The person can hire consultants to advise them.
d) Civil service. Most governments have a civil service. These are typically people who are employed by the government to administer services. Senior members of civil service are usually experienced.
e) Their own experiences. Nearly all have prior experience in both public and private sector roles. It is very unusual for anyone under the age of 35 to be elected. The median age is probably over 40 for elected officials and for US governors, probably 50 or more. For the most part, they have decades of some kind of work experience.
Usually there is a large foundation of actual career officials that don’t change when the elected officials and their political appointees change. They do most of the actual work of running the place.
(The British comedy “Yes, Minister” was based on that conflict of career bureaucrats vs elected officials.)
Parties also have institutional memory and lots of people who know how to run things who have had experience with that in the past.
You also have transition periods where the last administration hands over things to the new one.
A lot just runs on inertia and people wanting to keep the government going regardless of politics.
A key weakness of all that is, that little of the above is written down and depends on people not actually being sociopaths.
If you get politician in charge who intends to gut the civil service and replace everyone with appointed cronies, refuses to work with the opposition and has broken with the past of their party and alienated past office holders, you get a recipe for disaster.
After being elected you don’t take office the next day, there’s a transition period where people who have experience join up because it’s a guaranteed salary.
For executive positions typically the person leaving will also form a transition team to advise the incoming person of what is currently ongoing and what staff may be necessary to handle it. Obama did this for Trump, having an entire team dedicated to getting his staff up to speed.. unfortunately Trump did not reciprocate when Biden was elected.
Think about Belgium, a country that functionned normaly without a government for 652 days.
The bureaucracy is already in place, the legal system is already existing, and even without elected leaders there is an army of high ranking personnel that run the state apparatus.
All these politicians do really is “representation” of leadership, give their opinions regarding different issues, and maybe push their agenda and priorities.
Yet, generaly speaking, everything is already established and can run by itself.
Thus, in reality these politicians only come and fill a seat. If they are new at the job, they’ll simply be pushed around different meetings and be briefed on different topics.
Most of their job is actually symbolic. They’re the face of the government, both representing the government and “representing” their constituents in the state apparatus.
Lots of correct answers here but also, in more downballot positions, like the senate and house of reps, newcomers attend “congress class” before they assume their roles. Basically explaining to them their role in the structure, what they’re legally allowed to do within their role, and how to do it. How to phrase legislation, behave during a congressional session, personal rights and benefits, etc.
But as a whole, the assumption is such that if you got elected into office, it’s because you’re familiar enough with the system to convince people with your vision for it.
Not sure if this counts as a good ELI5 answer, but if you’re interested in a user-friendly explanation for what new congress members go through, I recommend checking out the films “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington” and…although it’s not entirely the focus of the movie, “Evan Almighty” does a pretty decent job of showing a new representative learning the ropes.
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