It's not necessarily about the answers, it's about the questions.

Traditional political history told a narrative of thrones and wars. Who did what, when did they do it, why did they do it. Although cultural history's, like its older sibling social history, major role has been to expand what we consider valid historical investigations (i.e. not just kings and presidents), more recently historians (well, medievalists and early modern Europeanists, I don't know when this movement would have started for other fields) have begun to develop a 'new political history' that studies "political culture."

It allows us to ask first of all the question of how things happen. How did "power" operate--how did rulers establish their authority to act, how did they attempt to make people listen to their orders.

But sometimes it is about the answers, or at least new possible answers. An interesting case of how political culture is helping scholars reevaluate an established (though always controversial) meaning of events is the English Reformation. Keith Shagan's Popular Politics in the English Reformation takes up the hotly debated topic of whether the E.R. was a "top-down" or "bottom-up" movement. He argues for how authorities' strategically pointed their actions to justify (authorize) them to the people, and how the actions of the people communicated assorted messages to the rulers that in turn influenced their future decisions. It's not a question of imposition from the top or overwhelming force from the bottom: it's a series of negotiations, of sorts.