No communist governments - Republics have a cultural leaning which can be populist which is as close as you'll get. In The North Burns Aventura is run by the Freemen's Council, which is populist. Fascist extremism would best be represented by despotism, which are lead by a single strong leader like a monarchy except they lack the cultural tradition to support it, it is simply enforced by strength.
Yes there are definitely political desires, the Aventurans as a state made up of former slaves have "Liberty" as an ideology which leads them to hate slave states. However we don't go into any of the more modern ideological constructs, the concepts remain fairly primitive and consist of mostly binary relationships (we like slavery/we hate slavery, strong government/weak government).
There are no puppet states, but nations can be carved out of other nations which are then generally allied with the power that helped free them. Napoleon type personalities can spawn, but to get to the state of Total War that one usually associates with Napoleon generally requires some push from the Old One.
Controversial... well... in a game of Evil you're bound to encounter controversial elements. We are never very explicit about these things, but the content of some events involve questionable content.