I have heard various shiurim, and would tend to agree with the following idea: That one of the central prophetic goals of Sefer Shoftim is to demonstrate the importance of having a strong, centralized leadership of the people--- i.e. a monarchy.
For example, take Chapter 3---which is like a summary chapter of the dynamic of "sin, get subjugated by the surrounding nations, call out to God, get saved by a Judge, follow God for the rest of the Judge's life, and then sin again after he/she dies." From Chapter 3 we see that there was no consistent leadership that bound all of the tribes of Israel together. In between Shoftim, there was no centralized leadership, and the people would turn away from God, and the cycle would begin again.
The end of the book-- the horrible example of Pilegesh b'Givah comes to mind--- emphasizes this tendency "ish kol hayashar b'einav"---there was no King in Israel, each person did what was right in his own eyes.
So on one important level, Sefer Shoftim is a record of the failure of the Jewish people to serve God properly without a monarchy to serve as a centralized political and religious leadership.
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