Avi K: If your interested in this kind of stuff, you may want to look into various shailos u’teshuvos of the rishonim (specifically rashba, rosh, maharam m’rottenburg) who deal extensively with the halakhic basis for popular majoritarian government. I haven’t seen or heard r’ shachter’s views on this, but its worth noting that almost all rishonim rejected shutfus as a viable model for republican/democratic government because it would create many administrative difficulties (i.e., you would need unanimous consent to enact any new law; you would need a kinyan among everybody every time you enact a new law; you would have no basis for legislating in non-monetary areas; and a host of other issues).
