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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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.
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