The phrase "a refusal to commit" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when discussing someone's unwillingness to make a decision or enter into a relationship or agreement.
Example: "His refusal to commit to the project left the team feeling uncertain about their future direction."
Alternatives: "an unwillingness to engage" or "a reluctance to decide".
Although critics often leap on this and claim that this betrays woolly thinking, evasion or obscurantism, I think that there are times when such a refusal to commit is justified.
Norm Blake, a former chief executive, said upon his resignation in 2000 that he found many officials to be motivated by the selfish attitude of "what's in it for me?" and a refusal to commit to change.
There were also less benign interpretations: an infatuation with the random and arbitrary; a desire to hedge bets; a refusal to commit to any point of view except negation.
Not only is the compulsive repetition of any single phrase sort of irksome, but this particular tic imparts a discomfort at being pinned down, a refusal to commit, a wiggling away from saying something in particular, a moderation that kind of amounts to constantly hedging one's bets.
And a refusal to commit to expansion would put Clinton at odds with most or all of the other potential candidates currently being discussed, most of whom (including Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley, and reluctant draftee Elizabeth Warren) have already endorsed the idea.
To show God that your sorrow is genuine and authentic is to be truly sorry and profess a refusal to commit the behaviors again.
The result was a constant evocation of high principle balanced by a hedging refusal to commit fully to any single principle — not the the Obama Doctrine, but the Obama Posture.
Only someone from a mixed-faith background, perhaps, can combine such a pointed interest in the lure of religion with such a sturdy refusal to commit to either side, although if I were Catholic I might take a furtive satisfaction in the way that "The White Ribbon" puts the moral sternness of the northern church through the wringer.
One of the motions up for debate criticised the Labour party's refusal to commit a future Labour government to bringing academies and free schools back into local democratic control.
Her refusal to commit to putting a final Brexit deal to a vote in parliament does indeed have echoes of the overbearing Tudor (though followers of history may also note that Henry's reformation parliament was the first to be made omnicompetent and asserted the supreme sovereignty of parliament in making statute).
A reader writes that Trump's refusal to commit to putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill is emblematic of his blatant disrespect for black women.
