In reading Gene Wolfe (really for the first time), I notice that he often writes about agency. Several of his stories feature slavery, such at Fifth Head of Cerberus, How The Whip Came Back, etc. It's a recurring theme in many of the stories.
I have also noticed that authority figures often lack agency. Examples are the robotic police officer in Forlesen and the genetically-modified "domesticated" policeman in The Hero As Werwolf. Even the senior police officer in A Story By John V. Marsh seems to lack real decision-making power.
What is Wolfe trying to say with this? Is he commenting that these people are merely the tools of some higher authority? Is he trying to tell us that most (or all) of us lack agency, if even these relatively powerful people do?
I think that's right. Wolfe is very often writing about systems in which individuals have very little agency. And that lack of agency can be because of actual rules and power, but also simply because these characters are just guys trying to do a job to pay their mortgage and also trying to get home as quickly as they can (you know, like most of us). They aren't thinking critically about the systems they're in and actively supporting ... but even if they have, there isn't really anything they can do about it because they've got bills to pay (itself a system, of course -- probably our biggest and most insidious system). We almost never meet truly powerful people in Wolfe's stories, just middle-management -- people who've worked hard for the comforts they have and whose primary motivation is to keep those comforts by keeping their head down and not rocking the boat (and by doing what in the Army we called CYA).
When we get to The Book of the New Sun and The Book of the Long Sun (way in the future, that one), we will actually meet some powerful people and it will be interesting to see what Wolfe does with them, keeping your observations in mind.