Products and coequalizers in pointed categories

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the property (P) that finite products commute with arbitrary coequalizers in pointed categories. Examples of such categories include any regular unital or (pointed) majority category with coequalizers, as well as any pointed factor permutable category with coequalizers. We establish a Mal'tsev term condition characterizing pointed varieties of universal algebras satisfying (P). We then consider categories satisfying (P) locally, i.e., those categories for which every fibre $Pt_{\mathbb{C}}(X)$ of the fibration of points $\pi: Pt_{\mathbb{C}} \rightarrow \mathbb{C}$ satisfies (P). Examples include any regular Mal'tsev or majority category with coequalizers, as well as any regular Gumm category with coequalizers. Varieties satisfying (P) locally are also characterized by a Mal'tsev term condition, which turns out to be equivalent to a variant of Gumm's shifting lemma. Furthermore, we show that the varieties satisfying (P) locally are precisely the varieties with normal local projections in the sense of Z. Janelidze.