In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.
All commentators agree that this is an editorial comment by the author of the Book of Judges and that the purpose of it, repeated several times, was to establish the theological proposition that Israel should have a king.  What many of the commentators seem to overlook is that there is an implied assertion in every one of the uses of this comment that, IF Israel had a king, all such disasters as those recorded in Judges would have been avoided.