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Viliam_Bur comments on To what degree do you model people as agents? - Less Wrong
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Is there a situation where it would be strategic to live all your life, or large areas of your life in non-agency?
Maybe a life in a dictatorship is like this. Be too agenty for someone to notice, and they may decide you are a potential risk, and your genes and memes get eliminated.
Later, even if the dictatorship is gone, the habits and the culture remain.
Is there a way to compare average citizens' agency in different nations, and correlate that with their history?
I guess signalling non-agency is tactical level; protective camouflage, poker bluffing etc. Agenty thinking as above is essentially strategic, winning with moves that are creative, devious, hard to predict or counter, going meta, gaming the system. Pretending to be a loyal citizen of Oceania is a good tactic while you covertly work towards other goals.
For cultural agency, the Wikipedia page on locus of control's one place to start. And there was the Power Distance Index in Gladwell's Outliers.
Humans are not very good at pretending. If you pretend something, you start believing it. Especially if you have to pretend it for years. And even if you succeeded in it, it would be very difficult to teach your children -- if they do it wrong, it may result in a death for your whole family, but if you wait until they are reasonable enough, they may already strongly believe other things.