Does the game offer a player to run his country in a liberal way? I don’t mean ‘liberal’ as in the american liberal/democrat party but as in:
Yes, in a nutshell.
It seems that if you try to run your country with low taxes and minimal state issues arise everywhere.
obesity, drug and alcohol abuse, health problems, crime etc. and the only way to combat it is to increase the influence of the state. Get some healthcare and education going, either by grants and subsidies or directly with state schools and healthcare. And to pay all that you need to increase taxes and suddenly you’re social-democrat and not liberal.
The game is biased towards socialism, flawed (still fun though 
) or it’s showing how terrible an idea liberalism is in real life if you care about above mentioned issues.
I guess it comes down to if you should care or not. where as in real life liberal governments you’re basically saying it’s peoples own problem, but the big red dots and severe consequences of the issues make you want to solve them and the only solid way of solving them seems to be to go the socialist way.
In some cases you can do it with softer measures but not as efficiently.
Edit: and if you try to please the liberals by reducing security, survaillance and police, then crime just spirals out of control. if you keep it they assassinate you.
I think your own ideology and prejudices might be affecting your viewpoint here.
If you think complete deregulation, no state interference at all and extremely low taxs, would result in some form of utopia then I lack the vocabulary to fully respond. Perhaps the game is over representative in this manner IDK, but the DEV has routinely answered queries on POLICY/STAT effects with links to where he got the info from. Now although you may or may not disagree with these findings, I do not think I have seen the DEV link any evidence that comes from a dodgy source (or a vested interest of either side). That IMO makes the game relatively balanced. Also remember it is a simplistic simulation (no offence to the DEV, it does a pretty good job all things considered), and so does its best.
Though perhaps I am being prejudicial here myself, based upon an over exposure to ideologically aligned (left and right) debates. If this is the case I do apologise, over exposure has made me sensitive
Sure countries can go overboard, regulation is an extremely complex issue and the end results can only at best be predicted with a some degree of confidence rather then an absolute do this and get that.
Now so as not to be a hypocrite my political leanings are mixed : border control (slightly right), animal cruelty (far left), immigration (slightly right), patriotism (middle right), free market (middle of the road), welfare (compassion with accountability : probably very slightly right), disability welfare(slightly left), censorship (middle left), liberties vs security (middle), foreign aid (slightly left), debt protection (middle left), etc. In other words I don’t align ideologically, but rather on each issue I align.
If you think my own bias are affecting my judgement here please feel free to edify me. As someone who regularly gets called a “bleeding heart” by the right wing crowd and a “fascist” by the left-wing I am used to having my ideological leanings decided solely on my willingness to debate factual inaccuracies, I have no desire to perpetuate this on others and if I have unwittingly done this, I again apologise.
If anything I’m leaning socialist so it’s not that I imagine low state interference is utopia, neither is socialism but I was hoping it was possible to at least get society working well with private alternatives, but doesn’t seem so.
I just wondered if the game can be played by somebody who isn’t a socialist, thanks.
btw. does the game take in account corruption and inflation?