We prove a strictification theorem for cartesian closed bicategories. First, we adapt Power’s proof of coherence for bicategories with finite bilimits to show that every bicategory with bicategorical cartesian closed structure is biequivalent to a 2-category with 2-categorical cartesian closed structure. Then we show how to extend this result to a Mac Lane-style “all pasting diagrams commute” coherence theorem: precisely, we show that in the free cartesian closed bicategory on a graph, there is at most one 2-cell between any parallel pair of 1-cells. The argument we employ is reminiscent of that used by Čubrić, Dybjer, and Scott to show normalisation for the simply-typed lambda calculus (Čubrić et al., 1998). The main results first appeared in a conference paper (Fiore and Saville, 2020) but for reasons of space many details are omitted there; here we provide the full development.

We define stacky Lie groups to be group objects in the 2-category of differentiable stacks. We show that every connected and étale stacky Lie group is equivalent to a crossed module of the form (Γ,G) where Γ is the fundamental group of the given stacky Lie group and G is the connected and simply connected Lie group integrating the Lie algebra of the stacky group. Our result is closely related to a strictification result of Baez and Lauda.