Respectfully, Manticore's average citizens do have some voice; they can vote for the House of Commons. Said House had/has several powers that the House of Lords lacks, and by the time of the later books (I did have to look this up to remind myself), much of the financial power/rights ("the power of the purse") of the House of Lords was actually being transferred to the House of Commons.
So....I mean, I'm not sure how that's a "failed democracy, where very few people have votes"?
In Manticore, you don't get to vote unless you pay more in taxes than you receive from the state in subsidies.
Given that:
1) Manticore in peacetime normally has low flat taxes, and has an unexamined ideological commitment to doing so to the point where a progressive income tax is viewed as a desperate wartime mobilization measure, AN...
2) Manticore can so very easily afford to subsidize citizens with low tax rates because of the magic money machine that is the Junction, AND...
3) Manticore has a heavily automated economy in which large numbers of people are likely to be unable to participate at high enough salaries to live on, especially since the cost of living in a society with a market economy will tend to track per capita GDP, SO...
4) There are a lot of people who realistically need some kind of government aid just to live in such a society, who are unemployed, underemployed, or not paid enough to pay meaningful taxes, SO...
Suffice to say that it isn't much of a stretch to predict that a large minority, or even a majority, of the Manticoran population doesn't actually get to vote.
Imagine it being like, say, the Bay Area in California, only with a rule where people with incomes below the regional average don't get to vote. Not unless they refuse to accept government living assistance- which a lot of people below the regional average can ill afford to do.
It's actually not a bad place to live. It's even a
good place to live in most ways. Outstanding, even, in some ways. There's lots of nice people there and everything... But you probably don't get to vote unless you're part of the "tech bubble" crowd or one of the elite professionals who serve them in ways they value highly.
The remaining citizens have a thriving democracy, where election results
matter. But then, so did Athens, another democracy with a very limited franchise. Compare and contrast to Haven, which has a universal franchise, but where all the elections are a carefully managed exercise in kabuki theater dominated by influential Legislaturalist clans and the Dolist Managers who serve as their ward bosses and PR team.
I'm not saying this is how Weber means for Honorverse Manticore to look, but it
is a logical projection of his own stated positions on the laws and economy of that society.
Prolong is one of the interesting parts of the series, here is a disruptive influence on social patterns thanks to the extended life span (and extended teenage years!) and it is causing changes and upheavals in the social fabric since humanity had based themselves around their previous lifespan and now has to adjust. One of the things that stuck out to me was how the head Admiral had to rotate out for another one due to the extended careers and the desire to keep people in the office fresh, no matter how good the current one is.
Right. Interestingly, Weber's mainline Honorverse novels begin almost
immediately after that transition has firmly kicked in... because in a fully developed society like Manticore, 1900 PD is just about the time at which the last surviving individuals without prolong are dying of old age, while virtually everyone below the age of eighty or ninety is in fact nigh-immortal and blessed with nearly perpetual youth and vitality.
[Or vitality, at least, for first-gen prolong recipients]
